Doctor Who - The Gunpowder Plot

The Doctor and some Guy.

Hello again, today I would like to tell you all about the latest Doctor Who Adventure Game, The Gunpowder Plot. I have covered all the other games in this series so now it’s time for me to produce my usual report on both game and story. I’ll split the review into two halves so first up is a review of the game itself...

The Game

Oh dear. It’s been almost a whole year since the last Adventure Game (the Vashta Nerada based Christmas episode) and surely the time has been spent evaluating the series so far and devising ways to make the game more fun? Less... crap? No it has not.

You may not remember my previous grumbles about this series and the inherent problems I’ve had with the game mechanics, and the general competency of the design. Let me remind you of the ways in which previous Doctor Who Adventure Games have offended me:

1. Stealth sections. Bloody stealth. Doctor Who is not Solid Snake or Rikimaru, he’s the Doctor, a stumbling, loud, talky man. The Adventure Games love to include stealth sections that are usually too tough for kids and too frustrating/boring for manchildren like me.

2. Time limit finishes where precision and timed button presses are essential, neither of which are possible given that controlling the characters feels like driving a hovercraft full of eels through a pool of extra slippy custard.

3. Mini games that are boring and frustrating. The previous games decided to recreate the Doctor’s habit of bashing gadgets together out of bits of junk by forcing you to play tiresome min games, the worst being the steady hand game. The game that can be found at the fair where if you touch the wire with your metal loop there’s a loud buzzing noise and you lose. It is the worst game.

4. Lots of running down corridors. Okay, this is a Doctor Who tradition but it doesn’t mean that I want to spend my time up and down the same bloody sets like poor old Colin Baker in Mindwarp.

So after almost a year to clear up the mistakes in past games I was expecting an improvement, what I got instead was a neutered version of the same frustrating mess. The good news is that the mini games are infrequent and largely painless, the hateful wire game has gone and is replaced with a simple connect the shapes puzzle. It’s pretty easy and not frustrating – great for kids and good for someone who just wants to get through the story. So although the mini games are still there, they’re largely painless and irrelevant. Hurray. Still, it would be nice not to have them at all.

And that’s the only positive.

The stealth section is present again, only this time the setting appears to be the traditional computer game staple of a bloody sewer. Not only do you have to play through a risible stealth section (now with added stealth ‘kills’) but you have to do it in a series of brown corridors. Fun. The stealth section is also overlong and repeated twice. Plodding slowly behind dim-witted aliens does not make for excitement or tension, it fosters boredom.

The traditional adventure game puzzles are incredibly easy and come across as half hearted. The good news is that it’s almost impossible to get stuck as almost all the puzzles can be solved with the sonic screwdriver or the psychic paper. The bad news is that it removes any thought or challenge to the puzzles. You'll often find an item but then realise that it’s the solution to the puzzle you’re about to encounter in the same area. Again, good for young children, bad for anyone who wants to put their brain to use. Still, I did find it funny that over the course of the game Amy manages to make use of the various remnants of a Chinese meal she keeps in her pocket.

The animation is appalling, everyone runs like the T-1000 in Terminator 2 and the water effects are awful. The game looks like it was developed 10 years ago, if you play the game at the default Medium graphics quality then Rory is a nightmare creature - a being spawned from beyond with fronds for hair and black liquid eyes. If you want to change any of the graphics settings you have to close down the game. There is no option to restart, you have to close down and restart the game manually - the game does not prompt you to do this either. I would also like to mention the incredibly bizarre bug I encountered during installation where for some reason the installer would hang for 20 minutes and then commence installation. I wasn’t the only one to have this problem and it took a trip to the official site to figure out why the installer wasn’t working.

Rory would like you to join him... IN HELL.

The game itself is terrible, the novelty of playing as the Doctor, Amy, and Rory soon wears off and you find yourself wondering how much time you’ve wasted watching poorly implemented cutscenes and listening to poor voice acting. Again it seems that there is little direction for the actors as even the normally excellent series regulars sound flat and unconvincing.

These complaints are nothing I haven’t already mentioned in previous reviews and it seems these problems will never be resolved. This is a tragedy, there was a chance here to create something truly special for the Doctor Who audience but the ball was dropped, rolled down a hill, and landed in an open sewer.

The Story

Enough moaning about the game, what’s the story like?

It’s actually not bad once you get past the crappy game mechanics and the tedious running through dull corridors and city streets. The Doctor crashes his TARDIS into another ship after escaping a horde of angry medieval Chinese warriors that Amy and Rory had managed to annoy. 'Dimensional lesions' begin to appear in the TARDIS itself and the Doctor tracks more lesions to Earth. The TARDIS crash lands in 17th Century London on the 5th November 1605 and the Doctor and crew stumble across Guy Fawkes and his co conspirators, who are led by a strange woman with glowing green eyes...

It transpires that the Doctor crashed into a Rutan ship (Horror of Fang Rock) and stranded a crew of Rutans under the streets of 17th Century London. The Rutans want to blow up Parliament so that the explosion can propel their ship off Earth (yeah... what?). It’s not long before the Sontarans arrive to stop the Rutans and take the Rutan’s genocide device. It seems the Rutans were travelling to Sontar to destroy the Sontaran race with a viral bomb. The Sontarans want to get their hands on this bomb so they can reverse engineer it and use it to destroy the Rutan race.

After a lot of running up and down corridors and avoiding Rutan and Sontaran patrols, the Doctor saves Parliament by transporting it into space and recreating his anti-Dalek weapon from Remembrance of the Daleks and modifies it to fight off the Rutans.

Eventually the Doctor reverse engineers the bomb to destroy the Rutans and gives a spare bomb to the Sontarans so that both races have the power to wipe each other out. The aliens, having reached a stalemate, decide to leave Earth alone and continue their war elsewhere (or later on one side will probably steal the other side's bomb and then detonate the genocide device). The Doctor then returns Parliament to Earth and leaves Guy Fawkes to be captured by the authorities.

The problem with the story is that it is constantly interrupted by the game itself and by heavy handed educational dialogue. “Hello, my name is Guy Fawkes, my favourite colour is green and I had liver and onions for dinner. I hope to blow up Parliament with my barrels of gunpowder. I hope I don’t get caught because the punishment of the time is to be pecked to death by a duck.” This pretty much happens every time you speak to one of the conspirators. I love history and I’m always interested in the stories of historical figures but the presentation in this game is sorely lacking, it's like having a textbook read aloud to you.

I remember an old collectible series called Discovery that had a Guy Fawkes special, it had wonderful posters and educational facts and stories behind the Gunpowder Plot. Hanging those posters on my wall was more fun than playing this game.

The BBC has released some educational material for schools to go hand in hand with the game. I hope the kids have fun with the PDFs 'cos the game will bore them to tears.

And Now For My Very Personal Take On The Cancellation of Doctor Who Confidential

Goodbye Sarah Jane - Elisabeth Sladen (1948 - 2011)

I'm not much good at eulogies and as I was born in 1978 I can't really say that Sarah Jane was my first companion, so instead of writing a heartfelt farewell to a wonderful actress I will leave that to those more qualified.

What I thought I would do instead is celebrate Lis Sladen's work and present to you a selection of my favourite Sarah Jane stories and moments from the classic series.

• The Time Warrior

Here's Sarah Jane Smith's introduction to the show (you have to forgive the Doctor in this scene, it's the 70s and he was going through a midlife crisis):



Given that the 3rd Doctor is a bit of a tit, Sarah Jane doesn't trust the Doctor or his motives for most of The Time Warrior, here's Sarah Jane quizzing him:

• Robot

Robot is Tom Baker's first story but it's also the beginning of the Doctor and Sarah's close friendship. Here's Sarah being convinced via a jelly baby into travelling through time, and then sharing a joke with the Doctor at Harry Sullivan's expense:

• Pyramids of Mars

Here Sarah Jane asks the question that the cowardly amongst us have all been wanting to ask, and learns all about alternative history and the consequences of evil god like beings mucking about with time.



Rather than making Sarah more frightened, the shocking revelation makes her determined to go back and stop Sutekh.

• The Hand of Fear

Sarah Jane's final classic Doctor Who story gave Lis Sladen some great scenes (her possession is quite chilling considering it's lovely Sarah Jane and she's dressed like Andy Pandy) but it's her farewell scene that really tugs at the heartstrings. It's made all the more sad by the fact that Sarah doesn't leave willingly, she wants to keep on travelling with the Doctor and yet he dumps her off somewhere near Aberdeen so he can go back to Gallifrey. Sniff.

Despite the sad and abrupt end to her travels she holds her head up high and whistles her way off the show.



This is just a small selection of Lis Sladen's work on the show and if you haven't seen a lot of Sarah Jane Smith then I recommend you seek out and watch as much of the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane stories as you can (apart from Revenge of the Cybermen).

Rest in peace, Elisabeth Sladen.

Doctor Who - Shadows of the Vashta Nerada

Another Doctor Who adventure game has arrived. I've played it and I have my usual spattering of opinions so download it here. 

Feel free to play along or just read my recap if you want to know what happens.
 

What the hell have they done to Santa's nose?

The Game

Oh god. I really thought the games were improving but I was wrong. The previous episode, TARDIS, was short and very limited in scope but at least it didn't contain stealth sections. The dreaded stealth returns in this episode along with numerous corridors. The endless bloody corridors. Corridors you'll have to run along a lot. Just like part three or four of a six part Pertwee or Baker story when the writer really needs to pad the running time. Shadows plunges you straight into some really tedious corridor running and doesn't stop from beginning to end. This game is all about running along metal walkways and entering codes into doors. It's boring, it's terrible and I'm pretty sure most kids will hate it.

The puzzles are very easy in comparison to previous episodes (the 'hold-your-hand-steady-or-lose-all-your-progress' game is thankfully absent) but they are dull. The first set of puzzles involves memorising a keypad PIN number, which is pretty tedious once but is hellish when you have to perform this half a dozen times in a row. In between the keypad puzzles is a jog through endless corridors. Corridors. Corridors with a bit of sea outside. Corridors. Bloody corridors.

The corridors become even more nightmarish when combined with insta-death sections. Have you played Gears of War? Do you remember the level with the shadowy bat things that could kill you instantly if you stood in a dark patch for too long? Well they put that level in this game and it's even less fun. Thematically it matches the monsters involved but it's infuriating as hell. The first time it happened my computer lost the will to live and crashed to a blue screen. This was a relief.

Later on there's a couple of the obligatory stealth sections where you have to lure a monster into another part of the level so you can kill it with a button press. This was done in the first two games and it's still terrible. I understand that it's an attempt to replicate the clever methods in which the Doctor usually disposes of monsters but I wish the designers had come up with variations on the theme rather than the obvious re-use of the same situations and set pieces as previous episodes.

Finally, the plot is the very worst of base-under-siege stories from the Doctor Who annual of alien invasions. It's quite simply uninspired, it doesn't offer anything that hasn't already been done with the formula and it's dull. Even the characters seem to react with bored acceptance when one of their number is killed off (in an unintentionally funny cutscene). Also, nothing is made of the Christmas setting other than some dialogue at the beginning and end.

In short - No sir, I didn't like it.

These guys can be killed by a 100W lightbulb. Pfft.

The Story

Continuing from the previous episode, TARDIS, the Doctor has brought Amy to far future London, which is now underwater and under attack from a giant armoured shark. The shark attempts to destroy the corridors so the Doctor and Amy flee deeper into the complex where they eventually meet a hapless piece of monster fodder. It's not really worth noting his name as he soon dies during a cutscene when the Vashta Nerada eat him while the lights are off.

Yes the shadowy piranhas are back. I'm not quite sure how they reached the sealed environment of London or how they can live underwater though (aren't they forest dwelling creatures?). Still, familiar baddies with easily modeled character designs are back!

The Doctor is trapped in a Troughton style story as the underwater base is under siege by aliens and he has to deal with a vaguely defined plague (which doesn't seem to have any symptoms or ill effects on anyone). He also has to deal with a computer straight out of a 1960s special effect budget (complete with wonky computer voice and crap design).

The Doctor offers to help and restore power to the lights in the complex. He does this by running down corridors and pressing switches. It's all very exciting. Only it's not because he runs down the same corridors he ran down earlier only this time if he steps into the dark he will die. ONLY THIS IS BULLCRAP BECAUSE IMMEDIATELY AFTER AVOIDING THE DARK PATCHES OF DOOM, THE DOCTOR ENTERS A CUTSCENE SET IN A TOTALLY PITCH BLACK ROOM AND ISN'T INSTANTLY KILLED LIKE HE WOULD HAVE BEEN EARLIER. Ahem.

The Doctor restores the power after much heroic button clicking, logic puzzle solving and skeletons in diving suits avoiding. Amy helps a bit by being sent off on her own to do something incredibly dangerous while the Doctor presumably eats a jammie dodger and stares at a circuit board.

The Doctor heads back to the humans and formulates a cure for the plague that still doesn't seem to be hurting anyone. This involves running down corridors and entering keycodes. It is great fun. The Doctor finds some collectibles but sighs at the futility of a collection of things that can't be accessed outside of the game.

The humans are cured of whatever plague they had and one of them repays the Doctor by threatening him and tying him up. The Doctor leaves the humans (who are going to use the lifepods to escape but then inexplicably don't use them while the Doctor is cocking about elsewhere) and heads over to the wreckage of that ship that was in that movie, The Philadelphia Experiment.

The Doctor explores the wreckage and eventually seals the rift by running along some corridors and avoiding instant deathtraps. The surviving humans (all two of them) apologise for misbehaving and offer the Doctor and Amy a Christmas dinner of sea pumpkins. The Doctor and Amy leg it.

THE BLESSED END.

If you'd like to know what the other episodes in the series are like then please head over to:

Episode One: City of the Daleks
Episode Two: Blood of the Cybermen
Episode Three: TARDIS

Doctor Who - TARDIS

The new Doctor Who adventure game is here. Download and play along at home or just skip that and read my spoiler filled recap below. Whatever. I'm not your dad.

The Game

The greatest piece of news since the announcement of the Doctor Who adventure game series is, THERE ARE NO STEALTH SECTIONS IN THIS EPISODE. Hallelujah!

Phew.

So this instalment has removed the direst part of the previous games, does this mean that TARDIS is a bold new step forward? Uh, no. Sorry. The hateful minigames are still there, the drag-a-thing-through-the-maze-but-don't-touch-the-wires game is present along with a timed button pressing activity, which is made very frustrating when coupled with lousy character movement. The Doctor (as portrayed by Matt Smith) may move like a man piloted by an uncoordinated bag of epileptic hedgehogs but that's no reason to try and emulate it in the game. The Doctor moves with the soupy grace of a milk float in treacle when attempting to turn mid movement. This makes the final 60 second TARDIS piloting game annoying in the extreme.

Still, at least in this episode you get to explore the TARDIS. Great, eh? Imagine visiting all those mad, impossible rooms that must be contained within the time machine's many corridors. Well keep imagining because you won't see them in this game. This instalment was clearly created on a budget, there are only two rooms and the adversity is a glowing blob with a generic name, The Entity. I'm worried that for this instalment it seems the money has run out and there are still 3 more to come.

The voice acting is an improvement this time, I can only assume (because I haven't checked) that the script was performed in between filming of the regular series and the Christmas special. Matt Smith sounds much more comfortable and less sleepy this time around. Karen Gillen is much improved too, but to be honest she does sound a bit bored of things at times. It doesn't help that Amy is written as being unthinking and careless as she casually insults everything and everyone and vandalises the Doctor's drawing room.

Collectibles are in this episode too, they're not hard to find this time. I'd advise looking underneath the TARDIS controls and the stairs. And yes, none of them are exciting at all.

TARDIS is also very short. It took about an hour to play through, there isn't a whole lot of action and the tale is very simple. This game is more of an interlude rather than a full fledged episode.



The Story

The plot is thus, The Doctor and Amy are discussing holiday plans when the TARDIS goes a bit wrong and flushes the Doctor out into space. There's a prologue available online that explains why the TARDIS is misbehaving. I wonder why it wasn't created as a cutscene? I guess it was for budgetary reasons. The cost of some horse faced aliens and another voice actor probably being too much for what is a very small game.

Anyway, the Doctor is in space without a helmet! Calamity! The Doctor, via the gift of charades, tells Amy to extend the TARDIS field around him so he can breathe. Amy accomplishes by pressing red buttons. Go player one! The Doctor then tells Amy to construct a tractor beam by finding some old junk in the TARDIS Drawing Room. A room we have never heard of up until now but it has been there all along. Honest.

Amy ventures into the drawing room and finds various items from the Doctor's previous adventures; the fourth Doctor's scarf, the Fifth's cricket ball, a Cyberman breast plate, the fob watch from Human Nature, and a few other items of interest. There also seems to be a ye olde portrait of what appears to be Steven Moffat above the fireplace, the picture shows him holding a sonic screwdriver. Amy finds the Master's laser screwdriver and heads back to the console room. A vase is broken while she's in the room but she dismisses it because the plot demands she casually ignore it. A glowing orange vapour emerges from the vase...

Amy completes the laser screwdriver/tractor beam device and pulls the Doctor back into the TARDIS. Unfortunately there's another wobble from the TARDIS and Amy is catapulted into the future of the TARDIS where she's now trapped on her own.

The Doctor runs off to the drawing room to construct a techno babble device so he can save Amy. The Doctor tries to explore the TARDIS but is sent back to the console room if he tries going anywhere but the drawing room. There is also no corridor exploring animation during the journey to the drawing room. The player is disappointed.

The Doctor completes the device and sends a message to Amy in the future. Amy activates it but is attacked by the glowing blob that escaped from the vase as she reappears in the present TARDIS. The Doctor manages to cajole The Entity (the creature's name may as well have been Glowy Blob, it has more personality at least) back into a vase and then he releases The Entity into the time vortex where it can feed on the smaller creatures within.

The Doctor is then allowed to explore the TARDIS but he finds he can only really examine the console controls. The console gives detailed descriptions as to what each lever and button does. The player has the sinking feeling that he's going to have to remember this stuff...

The Doctor then decides everything is okay and he can begin another journey through time. The player then frustratedly attempts to pilot the TARDIS four times before finally getting the ship moving.

The Doctor takes Amy to London in the future where it has become an underwater city. Any chances of a relaxing holiday are ruined by a large, monstrous shark patrolling the waters...

Doctor Who - Blood of the Cybermen

The second Doctor Who Adventure Game is here. Go grab if you want to play along at home or skip to the story section of this piece if you're lazy (or don't own a PC) and just want to know what happens.

I found the first game to be a disappointment, both technically and storywise so I was hoping that the second game would be an improvement. Is it?

Yes, albeit only a slight improvement.

THE GAME

The corridors. The endless corridors. With an occasional small outside bit. Yes, the level design once again is rather limited. You will spend most of your time running and sneaking down endless corridors avoiding enemies and looking for collectibles and puzzles to solve. The stealth portions of the game are just as aggravating and tedious as in the first instalment and require split second timing in some sections. In fact I'm not sure that casual gamers or the very young are going to be able to progress past some parts of the game without help from a savvy gaming veteran.

The minigames are not quite as odious this time. Gone is the stupid hold-an-icon-steady-around-a-bit-of-wire game from the Dalek adventure, this time it is replaced with a match rotating coloured balls affair which is much less frustrating.

There is a strange platform crossing section early in the game which is bloody terrible. The Doctor has to cross moving blocks of ice and if his efforts are slightly mistimed he falls to his death. Unfortunately the Doctor's movement is not the most precise and he tends to stumble around and slide off the ice to his doom. Granted, the 11th Doctor is a somewhat clumsy and inelegant creature but when you apply this to an insta-death platforming section, it does not lead to fun times. It's like controlling a dodgem car greased with butter. On ice.

Once again the voice acting is dull and undersold in places. I think it may be a problem with the direction as Matt Smith and Karen Gillen seem to be struggling with the correct range that voice acting requires. Perhaps a few more takes would have done the trick? For all I know, the lines were recorded between episodes which would explain the tiredness in the principal actors' performances.

The collectibles are back and I found several flavours of jelly baby. The collectibles are still entirely unnecessary but fun if you like looking at unused publicity photos of characters and monsters.



THE STORY (SPOILERS ABOUND)

Again, I will start this section with a question - did you enjoy Tomb of the Cybermen? Do you think it would be better mashed up with The Tenth Planet and every space based Troughton cyberman story? You'd be (un)surprised to find that the result is not particularly satisfying.

The Doctor receives a distress beacon and lands the TARDIS in the Arctic. The Doctor rescues an archaeologist/engineer named Chisholm from an ice cave and discovers that Chisholm was attempting to flee his own Arctic survey team.

Amy helps by moaning. Amy is still dressed in a mini skirt and at no point changes into something warmer. Instead she spends her time complaining and generally showing up Classic Who companions Tegan and Peri in the whingeing stakes. It seems that Phil Ford is struggling to write dialogue for Amy that makes her a sassy and feisty companion without making her a bit of an irritating berk. And is it too much to ask the developers to give Amy Pond different outfits for each game?

The Doctor decides to investigate the digsite that Chisholm has fled from, despite Chisholm frantic pleading not to return him there. Upon arrival Chisholm is immediately attacked by a Cybermat. A Cybermat! Yes, it's the return of the silly metal rat things from the 60s. Amy makes an incredibly lame mousemat joke at this point. I sigh and want to slap Phil Ford for that one. This time the Cybermats have a poison bite that infects you with a nano virus that turns you into a Cyberslave. Poor Chisholm immediately runs off and isolates himself in a locked room to save the Doctor and Amy from being infected or attacked by him.

Unfortunately for the Doctor and Amy they soon discover what a Cyberslave is when they open the main complex door and are attacked by a Cyberman in a jumpsuit. Seems a Cyberslave gets partially converted via the magic of nanites. Amy disables the Cyberslave by venting some steam at it. Yeah, I don't know how that really works either.

Inside the research complex, the Doctor finds a professor who is attempting to develop a cure for Cyberslave-itis. The Doctor cheerfully informs her that it won't work until he gets a pure sample of nano-wotsits from a Cyberslave. The Doctor rigs up an EMP device to disable a nest of Cybermats and then Amy disables a Cyberman with a loose electric cable. Armed with the necessary components, the Doctor creates a cure by playing a quick minigame. The professor has vanished though...

The Doctor uses the cure on Chisholm (who has now become a messy fusion of Cyberman and human - a makeup effect that I would have liked to have seen on the TV for real) before heading to the digsite to locate the cybership lying beneath the ice.

It's at this point I get confused about the current incarnation of Cybermen. It seems they've been blended with original versions to once again become a spacefaring, time travelling race. They are now much more advanced than their humble beginnings in series two of New Who. It's a little confusing really and I wonder if their weakness to gold or the repeated shouting of "excellent!" is going to make a comeback next.

The Doctor spends a lot of time pressing buttons on lifts and avoiding Cybermen until he eventually reaches the control centre of the ship. It's at this point we find out that the professor was a Cyberslave all along. GASP. It was a trap laid for the Doctor to find the ship so he could finish waking up the Cybermen, because apparently the Cyber Leader couldn't figure this out for himself. The professor aimed the distress call at the TARDIS to lure him all the way to the ship. This doesn't explain why she was working on a cure for the Cyberslave condition or why the Cyberslaves and Cybermen were attempting to kill the Doctor if they needed him to free them. THIS MAKES MY HEAD HURT.

The Doctor manages to escape the clutches of the Cybermen and save Amy from cyber conversion. Chisholm makes an heroic comeback and destroys the Cyber Leader and then the Doctor sets the ship to self destruct and everyone makes a last second escape. Hurrah. The Doctor and Amy depart leaving Chisholm to explain to a rescue party exactly what went on...

Apart from the dumb plot twist toward the end, this was a solid enough story. It's nothing we haven't seen done before with the Cybermen and I don't think reintroducing the Cybermats is anything other than Classic Who fan service. Still, this game was more enjoyable than City of the Daleks and hopefully the games will continue to improve.

Now if only we could have a clever plot and a wander around the TARIDS next time...

Doctor Who - City of the Daleks

It's here! It's finally here! The Doctor Who PC game made by the BBC and given to the public for free. FREE! Now isn't the BBC brilliant?

Is the game equally brilliant?

Well, not quite. I'm going to split this post into two parts, I'll discuss the mechanics of the game itself and then I'll take a look at and describe the story for those of you who can't, or won't, play the game but want to know what happens.

THE GAME

Mechanically the Doctor Who Adventure Game is a mix of point and click adventure, stealth, and godawful mini games. It's a strange choice to include so much stealth in a Doctor Who game, the Doctor is not the most stealthy of characters and his usual approach to a new situation is to boldly walk in, start showing off, and talk at everyone. I can understand the need for stealth in this story though, I just hope that each episode doesn't include this episode's often tedious stealth sequences.

The game repeats the same formula throughout its act based structure - you will be presented with a problem to overcome (find a path through ruined London, construct a device, switch power back on, etc) and then you'll be forced to creep and run down corridors to achieve it. Yes, even in a computer game the Doctor is still forced to explore and run down endless corridors. Bloody things. The various problems and tasks are not too puzzling and everything that you can interact with is helpfully highlighted with a bright blue glow whenever you stand near. Unfortunately in order to resolve the Doctor's problems you'll have to sneak behind Daleks and play some awful mini games. The worst offender is the gadget creation game where you have to drag an icon around a maze whilst avoiding touching the electric walls. It's just like the game at the fair where you have to keep your hand steady and guide a metal loop around a wavy wire only much less fun and you don't win a stuffed animal.

During the course of saving Earth from the Daleks you can find collectible icons hidden around each level. Your reward is often a picture of an old character or monster accompanied by a brief summary of their appearances or abilities. The first Doctor collectible I found was Colin Baker with his multi coloured coat. That coat was something I did not want to see suddenly appear on my screen without warning. The collectibles seem to do nothing other than fuel whatever OCD game habits you might have.

The voice acting isn't great. I don't know when the lines were recorded in the filming schedule but Karen Gillen sounds tired and flat. Matt Smith tries to inject some energy into his performance but he sounds weary too. The performances also sound like they were recorded separately, especially as the sound quality seems to change from line to line. It's a shame that the performances couldn't give the game's plot the energy it sorely needs from its principal characters.

As a game City of the Daleks is disappointing, personally I think that a point and click Doctor Who game that focuses more on the adventure aspects would be more satisfying. The puzzles in City of the Daleks are never taxing enough to give you a sense of achievement once you've completed them. I'd prefer to see less stealth and more puzzle solving and interaction with other characters in game. There are some dialogue moments where you speak as the Doctor but it's merely a case of clicking on all the options until you've heard all the dialogue and the plot moves on. I'm interested to see if the balance of gameplay elements changes in the next episode.



THE STORY

Did you enjoy the Willaim Hartnell Doctor stories, The Daleks and Dalek Invasion of Earth? Would you like to see them combined into a less satisfying whole with a classic Who continuity reference?

Yes?

What's wrong with you?

Okay, here it is - the story isn't very good. Phil Ford has constructed a very basic plot for a game. It's so generic in structure that I wonder if the fact that he was writing for a game caused him to reduce the number of locations to make it easy for the developers.

The Doctor takes Amy to 1963 London to see the swinging sixties. Unfortunately the Doctor learns (by virtue of the most conveniently placed and unnecessary newspaper headline ever) that the Daleks have already visited and laid waste to the entire planet.



The Doctor and Amy soon see the last remaining human (a young woman still dressed immaculately during the alien apocalypse) being hunted by the racist pepper pots, so they decide to follow her into the subway. Unfortunately the Doctor and Amy manage to get the poor girl killed when she is forced to sacrifice herself to cover the Doctor and Amy's escape back to the TARDIS.

The Doctor decides to visit the Dalek's home planet of Skaro to find out how they have acquired the ability to change time and conquer planets so rapidly. Yes, Skaro is back and the Daleks have rebuilt their capital city, Kaalann. The Doctor is shocked to see that the Daleks have recovered so quickly from their previous dire straits so he creeps around the city attempting to find out what happened. At this point Amy starts to fade like Marty McFly in Back to the Future.

It seems that Amy has now become a paradox (she now won't be born as the Daleks have exterminated the human race) and she is disappearing from reality. Luckily for her the Doctor makes a magic bracelet that stops her from disappearing altogether. The Doctor mentions that the TARDIS protects its passengers from paradoxes but it can't protect Amy for long.

The Doctor eventually tires of sneaking around Skaro (at one point he sends Amy to do the sneaking to look for Dalek spare parts, despite the fact she could be erased from existence at any moment) and surrenders himself to the Daleks. The Daleks as ever, spend all of their time talking to the Doctor instead of exterminating him. The Doctor meets the new Emperor Dalek and asks him to explain his evil plan, which he gladly does.

The Daleks have harnessed the Eye of Harmony (last seen in Doctor Who The Unsuccessful US Pilot Episode, fact fans) and are now using it, much as the Timelords did, to travel through time and space. It seems that the Eye of Harmony is now called the Eye of Time and it's now a natural phenomena that can be caught and housed as the Timelords are now gone and the Eye was just floating around space waiting to be pinched. What? It's utter nonsense of course but it's a significantly dramatic McGuffin as the Eye of Time gives the Daleks the power to access, and invade, all of time and space.

The Doctor and Amy jump into the Eye (apparently that's perfectly fine despite it being essentially a wibbly wobbly black hole thing) and appear, rather conveniently on Skaro before the Daleks appeared and rebuilt everything. Why this convenient piece of time travel occurs, I'm not sure.

The Doctor uses the opportunity to sabotage the device that houses the Eye of Time so that when the Daleks chase him back through time he can release the Eye. The Daleks appear through the Eye on old Skaro and the Doctor destroys the Eye's housing. Then the Doctor jumps back into the Eye which delivers him back to the TARDIS. Everything the Daleks did has now been undone and 1963 London is back to normal.

Urgh. The magic reset button.

Only, this makes no sense and is now a giant paradox. Seriously, don't think about it or you'll go mad. Furthermore, what is preventing the Daleks from locating the Eye again and repeating the same thing?

Oh well, it was nice to see that the Daleks weren't defeated once and for all (for what would have been the 8723rd time) but I don't think anything in the TV show is ever going to reference the events of the game in any meaningful way.

Ultimately this game is a disappointment due to its shoddy story more than its gameplay failings. I can forgive shoddy mechanics as long as the plot is entertaining and intriguing but City of the Daleks fails at both elements. I still think it's fantastic that the BBC have devoted time and talent to this project (and it's still early days) but I hope that the games improve during the course of their run.

The Daleks Always Invited The Wrong Guests

My Favourite TV Episodes - Part One - Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani

This is the first in a series of posts chronicling my favourite episodes of my favourite shows. Rev posted up a list of 20 in a single post but my memory doesn’t work so well these days so I’m going to post my favourites at the rate that I rewatch them. It’s going to be erratic but hopefully entertaining.

WARNING: I am going to be positive here, there will only be small traces of snark and no fury in these posts. Read on at your peril.

Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani



Okay, I’m cheating with my first choice because The Caves of Androzani is a four part story and I’m not going to choose just one of the episodes. So there. This is Peter Davison’s swan song as the fifth Doctor and is, in my mind, the best regeneration story so far. The story was written by Robert Holmes and the episodes were directed by Graeme Harper; a Doctor Who creative dream team. Robert Holmes had penned many of the series’ finest stories, such as The Ark in Space, Pyramids of Mars, and The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Graeme Harper was just starting out as a director but his direction was dynamic and creative from the first episode.

I first viewed The Caves of Androzani when I was six years old (it was first broadcast in March 1984) and it’s the earliest Doctor Who story that I can clearly remember watching at the time. I think I saw episodes before then but I don’t have childhood memories of them; only The Caves Of Androzani stuck in my mind and left an indelible impression. Throughout the rest of my childhood my enduring image of the Doctor was of a doomed hero, his outfit stained and torn, lying on the TARDIS floor and giving up his life in order to save his friend.

Later stories wouldn’t form such strong impressions and in fact I lost interest in the show during the Colin Baker era (forgive me Colin but your period was too scary for me at the age of six.) I still maintained my interest in Doctor Who but I read the Target novelisations of the older Doctors instead of watching the show. I didn’t return as a regular viewer until the Sylvester McCoy era; I remember awaiting Time and The Rani with great anticipation – what a fool I was, but I was still hooked on the McCoy era after that.

I was lucky though, my first episode could’ve been The Twin Dilemma and that would’ve scarred me for life.

The plot of Caves begins with the Doctor and Peri arriving on Androzani Minor, a barren planet that seemingly contains nothing of interest. Peri has the misfortune of falling into a cave system where she and the Doctor come into contact with raw spectrox (it’s alien bat poo that can be refined to make an immortality drug!) and they both contract a fatal case of spectrox toxemia. From this point on the Doctor and Peri become embroiled in a plot involving gun runners, miners, an evil corporation, androids, bat milk and bat poo, and an extremely unconvincing magma monster. The Doctor struggles to find a cure whilst avoiding the many factions vying for control of Androzani Minor. The Doctor is not central to the story at all, he’s an innocent victim in the schemes of the main players on Androzani Minor and for once he doesn’t care about the big picture, he just wants to save his friend Peri from a painful death.



There are so many players and concepts in The Caves of Androzani that it’s amazing everything holds together so well. There is an android army led by a Phantom of the Opera style villain (Sharez Jek) who are in opposition to an evil corporate CEO (Morgus) who will do anything to maximize his profits, a group of gun runners working for both Sharaz Jek and Morgus, a magma monster that eats anyone who wanders too far into the caves, and a society that uses spectrox (remember it’s processed bat guano) to delay the aging process. This story features the finest example of world building in Doctor Who as the audience learns snippets of information on Androzani society and its political situation. It’s also a Doctor Who story that combines a political thriller with gung ho action scenes. It’s a very special and rare story.

Peter Davison’s performance is brilliant; the fifth Doctor starts off at his most sarcastic and humorous as he spars with the local authority figures, but becomes more desperate and determined as the story progresses. It’s a very powerful display and throws off the fifth incarnation’s nice guy act as such behaviour becomes useless in the cut throat world of Androzani. The finale of episode three with the Doctor defiantly daring a group of mercenaries to kill him as he pilots a spacecraft on a collision course is full of wild eyed intensity from Davison, which is shocking because this Doctor never seems to get angry, just exasperated. To see him launch into a rant is shocking and powerful. Davison’s final scene at the end of episode four is fantastic (if slightly overshadowed by Nicola Bryant’s cleavage) as you really do wonder if the Doctor will survive his regeneration, “I might regenerate, I don’t know... feels different this time...”

Graeme Harper’s direction is superb; he manages to give the show a real sense of pace which was in direct contrast to many of the episodes of this era. The sequences where the Doctor is fleeing from machine gun wielding mercenaries looks fantastic, even though it’s just Peter Davison and some hairy blokes running around a sandy quarry. Harper also manages to hide the awful magma monster in shadows and use it very sparingly as it’s clear that it undermines a very good story. Harper would return to the show when Doctor Who was relaunched and he seems to now be the director of choice for the episodes with lots of action or powerful moments.

The most wonderful thing about Caves of Androzani is that it’s a tragedy. SPOILER (for a twenty-five year old story) – practically everyone dies. Few survive the conflict on Androzani Minor, not even the Doctor. Peri survives due only to the heroism of her friend. The important thing is that the characters aren’t just names on a list to be killed (like previous story Resurrection of the Daleks, which seems to introduce characters in order to kill them in the next scene), the characters in this tale are developed and given personalities before being killed off in the final episode and not one of them suffers a lackluster death. It’s grim and gritty done in the right way, the deaths matter and they serve the story.



The Caves of Androzani is my favourite Doctor Who story for many reasons but I’ll never forget that it taught a six year old me a simple lesson of determination and triumph in the face of adversity and overwhelming odds. It defined heroism for me and placed the Doctor in my heart forever.